A LITERARY PROGRAMME
Sir,-I did not hear the feature which Mr. Curnow describes in his letter in your issue of January 14. From his account of it, however, it is easy to recognise one of those stock items, some better and some worse, whether they consist of words or music, with which broadcasting services keep the pot boiling for about sixteen hours of the day. If that is so, a single item or a single compiler alone should not be picked out for blame. We should rather blame the type of product, literary or musical, which the NZBS demands, accepts, and distributes: responsibility lies very largely with the Service. It may be argued that it cannot hope to get enough good items to fill every hour of its time every day. But. does it try? Does it encourage work that is better than the average? Does it offer better payment for better work? Its difficulties in any case do not alter the responsibility which it owes to listeners, to works of art and their creators, to the canons of taste and judgment. This responsibility is the greater in that writers and composers are not always in a position to decide what use is or is not to be made of their work; fees must be paid if it is copyright, but there, effectively, their control ends. The living may have some say, the dead have none.
CHARLES
BRASCH
(Dunedin).
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19550304.2.12.2
Bibliographic details
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 814, 4 March 1955, Page 5
Word count
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239A LITERARY PROGRAMME New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 814, 4 March 1955, Page 5
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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